Islam: Is Integration Working? Part III of III

The "Muslim patrols" that try to take over a borough of London and impose Shari'a law on non-Muslims give Westerners the sense that we are not wanted in our own country.

Some Muslims may want to restrict the lives of women. But should we actually be encouraging such behaviour?

There are between 44 and 56 million Muslims in Europe. About 19 million, or 3.7%, live in the 27 countries of the European Union, which has an overall population of over 503 million. A mere 2.5 million Muslims live in the United States, much the same as in the UK. These numbers are not in themselves a problem, but when incomers fail or refuse to integrate, friction and divisions split the society. In my youth in Northern Ireland, it was unthinkable for a Catholic to marry a Protestant or vice versa. Today, only about 10% of marriages are mixed. There is still a long way to go, but the ban on mixed marriages, like the insistence on separate schooling (which continues), contributed to a fragmented society that erupted in violence in 1968 and through the long years of "the Troubles" that followed.

Separate Muslim schools, or bans on Muslim girls attending ballet schools or playing music or, for boys, playing cricket are not, of course, a disaster for Western civilization. But when Muslims denounce democracy, or preach the corruption and hatefulness of Jews and Christians, and alleging that rabbis and priests have distorted the words of the Torah and the Gospels — a doctrine known as tahrif [Qur'an 4:46] -- this hardly advances integration.

While we may be hoping that if Muslims are exposed to our way of life, they will prefer it, they may be hoping that if we are exposed to their way of life, we will prefer it. When extremist Muslims tell us we are not wanted in their lives or that they do not want to share our lives, or when they plant bombs in London, New York, Boston or Madrid, this antagonism to the West, and the constant stoking of resentment, becomes seriously corrosive.

Extremists are not "sui generis." Many take their inspiration from a body of Islamic literature that extols Muslims above the rest of mankind. Many emerge from that literature and from the concept of al-wala' wa'l-bara' ("loyalty and enmity"), from years spent in Muslim-only schools, from segregated meetings at university, or from anti-Israel speeches or marches.

The harm we experience from this drive to separatism is considerable, but it is not, I think, as great as the harm often done to Muslims themselves. Northern Irish Protestants and Catholics alike paid a heavy price for their decades of aloofness from one another's lives -- a price that has not yet been paid in full. When a boy is told it is good to kill in the cause of Allah, but that he may not play chess because it is worse than playing dice — and playing dice is like dipping your hands in pig's blood — ("How could the Lawgiver [Muhammad]), forbid dice but permit chess, which is many times worse?"), will he not grow up with a fragmentary sense of what is evil and what is good? Or perhaps the conviction that whatever is outside Sharia law is evil and whatever is inside Sharia law is good? The more Muslim schools there are to pass on such views to children, the more adults there are likely to be who might hope to gain the benefits but evade the responsibilities of life in modern Western culture. From these adults, though possibly small in number, extremists tend to emerge.

The "Muslim patrols" that try to take over a borough of London and impose Shari'a law on non-Muslims give many Westerners the sense that we are not wanted in our own countries, that we are the inferiors of a minority whose achievements are less than impressive, that we must abandon our truest principles about individual liberty and democracy and shed our morality because another group thinks it has a monopoly on what is right and wrong.

In Western countries, free speech permits a wide range of opinions; these are what distinguish us from cultures that are committed to control and that often seem to use religion to advance political aims.

Although none of us has a monopoly on what is right and wrong, when I lived in Iran, I learned how to speak, gesture, and dress to fit in. When I lived in Morocco, I wore a jellaba and tried to improve my Moroccan Arabic. Conversely, when incomers defy the norms of their host culture, it can, and perhaps should, create a sense of unease.

Western societies have been working for decades on legislation to raise the status of women in our homes and workplaces. Perhaps we feel uncomfortable with the hijab because we suspect — rightly or wrongly — that rather than reflecting a protection of women, as is heralded, at another level it reflects an oppression of women that many wish would become outdated.

There may be a suspicion that in many Muslim countries women wear a veil not out of their own free choice, but as the result of coercion, from either members of the family or pressures of the community. In Saudi Arabia and Iran, for example, a young woman with a scarf slightly awry may be stopped by patrols in the street, accused of being bad-hijab[1], then publicly humiliated, and possibly taken to a police station and jailed.

If Muslims come to our shores or are born and brought up here, they have the same freedoms, responsibilities, and the rights we all possess. Here in Britain, Muslims like all other citizens, have free access to our health services, free access to public schooling to the age of 18, a right to vote or to be elected as local councillors and national MPs, a right to own businesses, and freedom to serve as lifeboat sailors or magistrates or special constables.

The doctrine of al-wala' wa'l-bara', however, works against all this. In its most extreme form, it reflects the view of Ahmad Sirhindi that, "Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam."[2]

We do not mind people demonstrating in front of parliament calling for changes to the law. But when the banners read, "Behead those who insult Islam" or "Britain, your 9/11 is on its way," it is probably advisable to reassess matters.

No doubt Muslims have things to teach us, but those things cannot be the right to abuse women, homosexuals, people who are not Muslim, or the right to murder someone for apostasy. Our societies are better without those acts. Some Muslims may want to restrict the lives of women, the same way that, for example, in India (before the British put a stop to it), women were forced to commit suttee -- be thrown on the burning funeral pyre after their husbands had died. But should we actually be encouraging such behaviour?

Whenever incoming groups make efforts to integrate, there are immense benefits to them -- economically, in human rights, engagement in politics and so on. When we make honor killings or female genital mutilation or underage marriage illegal, surely that prohibition brings immense benefits to Muslim women and children, the same way outlawing suttee did.

Revisions or interpretations such as these, however, are what al-wala' wa'l-bara' seems designed to prevent.

Like Muslims, we have to struggle with our prejudices and a tendency to stereotype others. In the end, this attitude becomes a standoff. A 2006 Pew survey stated that, "in Britain worries about Islamic extremism are intense among both the general public and the Muslim minority population as well. Concerns about the problem rose markedly this year among the general public. And worries about extremism within the British Muslim community are greater than in France, Germany, and Spain."

Similar concerns, even if not as high as in Britain, exist across Europe. Incidents such as the 2013 public beheading of soldier Lee Rigby have horrified most of the public. Britons have been particularly estranged by the Muslim protests that took place in Barking in 2010, notably when 40 demonstrators screamed abuse and carried defamatory placards that insulted British soldiers returning from Afghanistan and by plans for a protest in Wootton Basset, where the coffins of dead British soldiers were processed along the main street while large numbers of their friends and families stood in silence to honour their passing.

British Muslims, many waving the black flag of jihad, hurl insults and abuse at soldiers returning from Afghanistan in 2010, in London.

When Muslims send their young girls abroad to have their private parts mutilated (the first prosecutions for this have just started in the UK), or bring them to Pakistan on holidays -- when thirteen-year-olds are forcibly married to cousins, and we do nothing[3] -- we betray values on which our grandparents would probably have instinctively acted, again, as they did against suttee.

Preachers in British mosques are still calling for jihad against their fellow citizens, and Islamists march with others through the streets of Antwerp, chanting, "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas." Honor killings and domestic violence take place, and the Muslim -- and even European communities -- close their ranks and no one is prosecuted, or even criticized.

Are we actually seeing -- with the quiet acceptance of such atrocities -- a passive urge to self-destruction infiltrate the heart of our society? Did our parents really fight the Nazis to see Britain, France or the U.S. give way to another totalitarian ideology?

Western society gives great scope to minority views, but we do not cut our girl children with razor blades, even to spare them a possibly lethal butchery with unwashed cut-glass elsewhere; and we do not marry them off at puberty.

As a multiculturalist, I enjoy what other countries have to offer. We should all read the poetry of Hafez, visit the Baha'i gardens in Haifa and eat Chinese food with chopsticks twice a day. If all change were forbidden, there would never be progress. Our ability to change is what distances us so much from Islam, where kull al-bid'a kufr -- "every innovation is unbelief" -- in many places still holds sway.

And this is where the issue of Islam is crucial. From its beginning, for centuries, Muslims conquered, enslaved, and reduced Jews and Christians to dhimmitude [the state of "tolerated" lower-class citizens who have to pay protection money]. They also tightly controlled what other Muslims could think.

Islam has not changed much internally, but it has already changed the world. The disappearance of communism as the principal enemy of Western democracy left a gap into which Islamic forces, some open, some clandestine, are moving -- all apparently with a profound suspicion of the West and its motives.

Our politicians, lawyers and intellectuals do not, for the most part, appear to believe there is a threat. They also appear not much to care if our values are undermined and, in their place, a strong version of Islam is installed in the heart of the only civilization that has given mankind freedom, tolerance, and the democratic right to master our own affairs.

There are great things in Islam and there is much we can and must learn from its history and culture. But the religion itself — not the Safavid and Mughal miniatures, not the ringing of the santurs, not the exquisite minarets and domes — remains impervious to the temptations and freedoms we can offer.

Let us go on sitting at cafés in Paris, watching languid and beautiful women glide by, and remember their sisters, married to men who beat them and whom religious law will not let them divorce, while sometimes sharing their husbands with one, two or three other wives, and sitting at home while their husbands go out to contract yet another temporary or misyar marriage. There are two directions we can take. It is up to our politicians and our religious leaders to choose which way we go.

[1] The Persian word bad is an exact equivalent of the English word, but is not borrowed from English.

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7 Reader Comments

Garth • Jun 29, 2014 at 07:07

- But you're not. At the root cause of course is the inability of Islam, exemplified by the unalterable Koran - to change. Britain is destined for Balkanisation and the only people who could have stopped it possess the same mentality as those denying the nazi threat before WW2; albeit our Attlee list is much larger.

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Duine • Jun 22, 2014 at 16:40

The Muslim issue presents a conundrum to a free society. The virtue of tolerance really only works if there is reciprocity. I agree not to kill you with the understanding that you agree not to kill me. If you don't share that assumption there is a problem. So there is a point beyond which tolerance cannot go. It may be ironic, but at some point a tolerant society must become intolerant in order to preserve the value of tolerance, and perhaps even the society itself. Determining that point can only be done by prioritizing values, so that when two values come into conflict the lesser must yield to the greater. But which is which? This is where it seems many of our politicians, and perhaps the citizenry itself, become confused. But it is the issue we must get right. Our civilization depends on it.

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Enid • Jun 20, 2014 at 06:04

Muslims are showy camera tarts. While the Western world watches and discusses their bad behaviour, we neglect to teach our own young people about our own culture. This may yet be our undoing.

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Frank Adam • Jun 20, 2014 at 05:56

How come certain Moslem schools are forbidding boys to play cricket when India (with more Moslems than Pakistan or Bangladesh), Pakistan and Bangladesh themselves are keen cricketing nations? This looks like another example of "religion" being allowed a free hand as snobbery and social point scoring.

Referencing "mixed" marriages - which one is not in its own way? Israel was worried in the 50's that there were only 2.5% between those families from Ashkenazi and Sephardi backgrounds, but this percentage doubled steadily every decade until the 80's when President Herzog noted it was over 24% and it has not been a talking point since. In fact Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi was the son of a Syrian mother and Bulgarian father and the issue is now dead as the dodo.

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Keith • Jun 19, 2014 at 13:20

Due to the politically correct and the West loathing liberal left, the West will be the first society to legislate itself out of existence. Look at what is happening - Muslims allowed to protest calling for anyone who insults Islam to be beheaded and calling for Sharia law to be introduced throughout the UK. The government is pandering to Islam by the introduction of hate speech laws that are not applied to Muslims but anyone who criticizes Islam is questioned and arrested by the police. Hard line Muslim clerics are allowed to visit the country and address conferences but anyone against Islam (Geert Wilders/Pamela Geller) is refused a visa. Muslims are allowed to segregate audiences in accordance with their beliefs but anyone who complains is told they are racist/Islamophobic.

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Avi Keslinger • Jun 19, 2014 at 08:24

MacEoin's comments about the temptations Western society has to offer as well as his unfounded comments about refusal to marry outside one's faith (common to all three major religions - and while we are on the subject of other religions, Christianity also imposed ghettoization on Jews and consigned both Jews and Moslems to the Inquisition) show that he really wants to impose secular values on others. While people who come to another country to live should speak the language and be good citizens they have no requirement to give up their religious identity. This, in fact, is the secret of America's success in absorbing minorities. So long as one is a good citizen one may keep one's particular identity.

As for his salacious closing remark, MacEoin does not raise the status of women but lowers it to that of sex objects. Only true values of modesty can free women.

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Randy Hill • Jun 19, 2014 at 08:18

Please do not assume from the title that this is going to be an anti-Islam rant. The question is posited for the purpose of viewing what Islam is doing to itself (I'm only saying Islam because the haters claim to truly represent it).

Muslims--as the blog pointed out--have migrated throughout the world. They have been accepted, but only to the degree that they wish to be accepted. In America, Muslims protest our First Amendment rights which encompasses both religion and free speech. They seek to outlaw any viewpoint adverse to the prophet Muhammad.

Transplanted Muslims do little to nothing in the way of seeking conformance to the rules of their new homes. The United States accepts all religions and allows for the free exercise of each. As long as they do no violence our government will leave them be.

To speak against Islam is called racist by many here. Like my faith--Catholicism--I don't really see a race issue, after all, Islam crosses all colors and origins. It is hard for Americans to understand why we send troops to help Muslim run nations but our fighting personnel must hide Christian and Jewish objects due to national law.

Peace and tolerance are noble words. But even more noble is to actually pursue them and obtain them. The word WASAT comes to mind as a starting point. Hate is a killer. Not only does it kill those Muslims and non-Muslims who do not share the same beliefs as the haters, it kills the haters on the inside.

Let's pray for a turning point for good. Let's hope to see Christian, Jewish and Muslim children playing together without hate. That each may retain their spiritual autonomy, but accept that others are not of the same fold. When this happens the children can live safe, happy and normal lives.

Robert Levinson, 67, an American citizen, is a retired DEA and FBI agent. In 2007, while researching a cigarette smuggling case as a private investigator, he was abducted in Iran and has since been held hostage.